Suchergebnisse

In 2019, the growth of the world economy slowed to 2.9%, the lowest annual rate recorded since the subprime crisis. This was a year in which the elements of uncertainty that had previously threatened the stability of the cycle began to have a more serious effect on economic expansion. Among these elements, there are essentially two – both of a political nature – that stand out from the rest. The first is the trade war between the world's leading economy, United States and its nearest contender, China, which led to a dangerous tariff escalation. The second was the confirmation of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union, whose long denouement plunged the economy and the companies of the old continent into uncertainty. However, the negative impact of both these factors is clearly waning, and, coupled with the continued favorable financial conditions, suggests a return to growth of the world economy of 3.3% for 2020 and 3.4% for 2021.

What constitutes a sovereign wealth fund is contested. In general, however, it is a state-sponsored institutional investor that is answerable only to the state and makes investments according to the interests and mandate of that state. Different types of funds have emerged in the context of particular economic conjunctures, and over the last decade the number of sovereign wealth funds has grown substantially, with total assets exceeding $7 trillion. This trend is set to continue, as more and more countries look to establish an SWF. The place of SWFs in global financial markets may appear settled, but this does not mean that concerns about "state capital" and its place in financial markets has gone away. This short book offers an incisive discussion of the development of this class of investor, how they have become legitimate actors in global financial markets, and their role as providers of capital and in economic development at home and abroad.

It has now been nearly two years since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Vaccine development and active public health campaigns have delivered us to the threshold of a return to "normal", even as we struggle to reimage its definition. In the wake of the immediate onset of the crisis, sovereign investment slowed dramatically consistent with an abrupt halt to an economic activity generally. As interest rates continued to decline and public market equity valuations recovered in 2020, the pace of global M&A activity also rebounded with quarterly deal counts returning to late-2019 levels by Q4 2020. In the intervening period, deal activity remained robust in depth, breadth, and velocity, as 2021 ended with record volumes and values. This transformation has paralleled the growth in direct sovereign investment activity that we have tracked and studied since 2010 and continues to feature prominently in the direct investing activity of the sovereign investors whose recent deals comprise of our current sample. Not surprisingly, and quite as usual, prior patterns – participating funds, volumes, geographies, and even co-investment practices – persist. However, the five quarters that constitute our current student have been anything but "normal". Our current sample includes direct sovereign equity investments announced between October 2020 and December 2021. Our coverage includes 418 investments across 448 discrete deals with the difference attributable to investments in which sovereign funds invested in the same deal. Thus, our current sample is nearly 3 times larger than our 2019-20 sample and on average considerably larger than any prior sample. We track the investment activity of 40 SWFs. Similarly to previous reports, activity was dominated by the top 5. These include Temasek who comprise 27.9% of investment activity, GIC, Mubadala, the Qatar Investment Authority, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. This group of five together represent approximately 23% of the funds included in our sample, but over 85% of ...

A Year of "Living Dangerously": The COVID Pandemic and Sovereign Wealth Fund Direct Investments in 2019-2020 As stores of surplus capital, a primary raison d'etre of many SWFs is to serve as fiscal buffers to provide fiscal support to owner governments. During the COVID pandemic, as lockdowns deepened, economic activity ground to a stop, impeding revenue generation, while dramatically increasing the demands on fiscal resources both directly and indirectly. In many cases, sovereign funds were called on to offset burgeoning budget gaps and to stabilize rapidly depleting fiscal resources even as budgets were cut and affected governments scrambled to find other available funding – including credit – to backstop the economic and financial impacts of the crisis. Reported drawdowns were widespread, ranging from large funds such as in Qatar, Russia, Singapore, and even Norway, where nearly 5% of the Government Pension Fund Global's capital was earmarked for fiscal support, to small funds – as in Ghana, Nigeria, or Botswana – that are far less well-resourced. Beyond direct fiscal support to owner governments, SWFs engaged in a variety of other supplemental measures, designed to provide relief to distressed sectors of local economies. Mubadala Investment Company (United Arab Emirates), for example, rolled out a $114 million rent relief plan in the retail, residential, office, and hospitality sectors. In Russia, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has been actively engaged in various phases of its government's vaccine development efforts, including investing in vaccine production. Besides, when and where appropriate, funds – from Singapore or Malaysia to Turkey have stepped in to fund or recapitalize local firms operating in key state sectors.